Call for Papers: Performing Prejudice

Call for Papers: Performing Prejudice

We would like to invite scholars to a symposium on performing prejudice at Newcastle University on the 22nd July 2013. We are interested in submission of short papers, position papers and/or roundtable discussions to enable the exchange of ideas.

The aim of this symposium is to exchange ideas and develop a nuanced understanding of performances of prejudice and how these manifest themselves in community encounters with the legal, cultural and policy environments. We would like to hear from those interested in the performance in songs, music, recordings, community narratives, cultural texts (broadly defined), where they construct conflict between ethnic, religious or racial groups, particularly in the social life of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. A key focus of this symposium will be the exchange of ideas focused around the question of conflictual agency in the performance of prejudice. We are interested in hearing from scholars from any area of the arts, humanities and social sciences, but are particularly interested in those whose work engages methods such as critical discourse analysis, performance studies, media analysis, sociological and socio-legal approaches. We envisage publishing an edited collection of essays based upon work to emerge from the symposium.


Discourses of race, religion, ethnicity and multiculturalism are currently under public scrutiny and we are interested both in the performative othering of visible minorities (e.g. those classified by themselves or others as Muslim-British) as well as less visible minorities in these islands (white sectarianism, homophobia, anti-semitism, discrimination on grounds of learning disabilities and mental health, etc.). We are also interested in other groups such as the obese, the elderly and alternative subcultures, and the extent to which it is appropriate or not to conceive of these as rights-holding groups with experiences of socio-structural prejudice. Another key concern is the othering of women; one element is how this interacts with and can be separated from trans- and other gender identity discrimination. All these may be considered from an intersectional perspective. Contributions about other groups not listed here are also welcomed.

In encounters with the legal, cultural and policy environments, some of the key issues remain focused around identifying the boundaries of prejudicial agency, and we would like to discuss how the act of performance (in addition to the textual meanings) can perform prejudicial agency. Furthermore, we are interested in theorizations of prejudicial performance that deal both with intentional prejudice that recognises the other and identifies the self as the correct form of identity, and blind prejudice that does not recognise the other(s) but privileges the self-identity as ‘natural’ and thereby prejudicing the other through a complete lack of recognition (i.e. both of Hall’s recognition and identification concepts). The recognition of the other (or lack thereof) is crucial to discourses and performance of prejudice, both for the principal narrative voice and real, virtual or imagined audiences.

The symposium will be held over one day at Newcastle University and participants will be responsible for their own travel and any accommodation etc. We are hoping for a genuinely open exchange of ideas and therefore anticipate both short papers (10-20 minutes) as well as panel discussions. To submit a proposal for participation please submit a 250 word abstract by Monday the 3rd June 2013 to either:

Dr Simon McKerrell (International Centre for Music Studies, Newcastle University)
simon.mckerrell@ncl.ac.uk

or

Dr Kay Goodall (The Stirling Law School, University of Stirling)
k.e.goodall@stir.ac.uk